For when sane just isn’t good enough

Posts Tagged ‘news’

The author that introduced me to an ongoing love of fantasy books, David Eddings, passed away on Tuesday 2 June 2009, at the age of 77. Eddings’ two most popular series, the Belgariad and the Malloreon, are still two of the most popular bildungsroman series written, and haven’t been out of print since they were first published back in the early 1980s. The series is still one of my favorites, and holds a very special place in my heart.

[David’s publisher, Jane] Johnson said he would be missed “tremendously” at HarperCollins, which published his last title, The Elder Gods, in 2006. “He was a towering force of modern commercial fiction, a master of the epic, and a delight to work with,” she said. “The Voyager team and I were immensely sad to hear the news.”

My condolences to David’s family. The world of literature is far, far poorer for the loss.

Blizzard Entertainment, the guys who made World of Warcraft, possibly one of the largest multiplayer online games in existence, were approached by Uwe Boll for movie rights. In Mr Boll’s own words:

“I got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard, and he said, ‘We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you,’” Boll revealed. “Because it’s such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income, what the company has with it.”

Are we surprised at all that game studios are finally grasping the idea that he’s almost universally reviled by gamers, and that selling him the movie rights for games is not a quick money-making machine? Granted, as was pointed out to me in a prior post, game to movie adaptations are not the best at the most spectacular of times, but maybe game-to-movie adaptations need as much help as they can get. Getting Uwe Boll to direct a game-to-movie translation is about as helpful to the case as, for sheer argument’s sake, giving a serial killer his own butchery, knives, band-saw, and ready line of victims. I’m just glad that studios are finally beginning to realize this fact.

Do you remember when Calvin creates his own newspaper, and he walks around the house looking for stories? Or the time when he entered the traffic sign competition, using cranium red and spaghetti sauce for effects? Do you remember how Bill Waterson phrased the news headlines?